


Stars Turning High (Canon Pronoun Edit)

by Interrobam



Series: A Good New Beginning//A Far Off Destination [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-10
Updated: 2010-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>" “Oh!” Rung perked up noticeably, plating flaring. “Do you craft as well?”</p><p>“I..” Whirl used to. Whirl had. Whirl had crafted, once, before his hands became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. Before his spark became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. He hadn’t known his spark could still ache for that until Rung had begun describing it. But he couldn't just tell him that. “I’ve… dabbled.” "</p><p> <br/>In which, on another possible Lost Light, Whirl and Rung accidentally become a couple.</p><p>(Edit of "Stars Turning High" with canon pronouns. Original can be found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4720274 )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I refrained from tagging this fic in order to avoid clogging up the tags with two versions of the same story. These are the tags it would have had:  
> 
> 
> Rung/Whirl, Whirl (Transformers), Rung (Transformers), AU: Rung is not Whirl's therapist, AU: Whirl is not Jetstream, Developing Relationship, First Dates, Alien Culture, Noncanon Pronouns, Accidental Flirting, Disabled Character, Autistic Rung, Intrusive Thoughts, Violent Thoughts, Command Hallucinations, Suicidal Ideation, Past Suicide Attempts, Slight AU, Falling In Love, Bonding, Critical Social Skills Failure, Canon-Typical Violence, Kissing, Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy, Past Medical Abuse, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Banter
> 
>    
>  Whirl has violent command hallucinations (similar to intrusive thoughts/impulses) in this fic, which are presented in second person as in “you should do this.” If commands are triggering for you please proceed with caution. This fic will also contain suicidal ideation and past medical abuse.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

When Whirl had come out of recharge at the start of the week, he had fully expected to be floating around around in the Allspark by now.

He had never been big on religion, but he had hoped that-- whatever the next plane of existence looked like-- he would be able to pick fights with Dai Atlas, or at least beat the scrap out of Killmaster a second time. But then tall purple and ghoulish had had to come in and ruin everything. And then the mecha hadn’t even _cared_ that he’d ruined everything, which was even _worse_ , and Whirl had had no choice but to defend his honor.

Waking up in the Lost Light’s Medbay was... _disappointing_. And, since Whirl was in the habit of uniformly consolidating all negative emotions into molten frothing rage, that disappointment found a throat and began to squeeze. He was hoping that the first neck he found would belong to his peeping tom, but the frame writhing in his grip was quite distinctly orange, not purple. Disappointing. [[kill them pop their helm off their spine twist them apart]] He eased up his grip, but didn’t drop the mecha completely. If he looked like he was intent on killing someone Ratchet might call for a security drone to take him down. Getting his helm shot off by a drone was a lousy offlining compared to the one he’d arranged for that morning, but at that moment he felt desperate enough to deem it an acceptable substitute.

His suicide-by-drone backup plan was thwarted, however, when Ratchet started shouting something about him going back to jail. Whirl didn’t want to go back to jail. You couldn’t offline your way out of jail. He had _tried_ , back at Garrus-1. Some of his fellow prisoners had even been generous enough to help beat him halfway to oblivion. It hadn’t worked. Whirl wondered, bitterly, who a mecha had to kill to get their spark snuffed out in this joint. Apparently, not the one he was currently throttling. Whoever he was squeezing wasn’t even important enough to call a security drone in for. He let the mecha drop to the floor.

You try to do the universe a favor and it lands you on a junker full of D-listers.

Whirl found himself being just operational enough to haul himself out of the Medbay. That was good enough for him, which was good enough for Ratchet. Or at least, he didn’t try to stop him. Probably knew better than to waste his time. He dragged himself haphazardly down the hallways at an uneven pace, smearing fuel and paint against the walls. His adrenaline was running out and his resolve had been severely dampened, but if he wandered far and wide enough he would inevitably meet someone who hated him enough to try to offline him. There were not many Cybertronians _left_ in the galaxy, and Whirl held the dubious honor of being almost equally loathed by his allies and enemies. If he wandered far enough, if the warnings stopped blocking his vision, if he knew the way to an airlock, if he, _if he_ -

He didn’t, and Ultra Fragnus found him. Which was _great_. Which he _loved_. Nothing better than meeting an old Wreckers pal who you’d last seen when he was called in to beat you out of a tantrum. A tantrum which he’d been throwing because Springer was too good for some awful half death, some protracted imprisonment, from rusting on a medical slab, because _Springer would have stopped Impactor_. Because no matter how many times he tried to explain, Roadbuster _wouldn’t understand_. 

Magnus didn’t want him on the crew. _Me and you both, buddy_ , he thought.

“Listen, Fragnus,” he snapped in the middle of the enforcer’s spiel about _proper channels_ and _security measures_ and _beep boop bleep_.

“That is not my designation,” he responded, predictably derailed by the blatant show of disrespect.

“ _Uncle_ Fragnus?”

“Whirl, state your intent.” Magnus was clearly not in the mood to play around.

“What I _want_ is to get off this _wreck_ ,” he stomped his pede on the floor for emphasis. “Drop me off back on Cybertron and I’ll be out of your field forever.”

“I’m afraid that is not possible,” Ultra Magnus exvented. Whirl could tell, even through the stern faceplate, how sincerely he wished it _was_ possible. “The engines have been damaged, and our location is currently unknown.”

“ _Unknown?_ Mags, tell me you’re shoving dross down my intake.”

“I am most certainly not.” 

Whirl let out an extended burst of static frustration, turned and slammed his helm against the wall hard enough to jostle his optic in its bell. “Great.”

“You have two choices, Whirl. Either I take you down to the brig and you stay there for the duration, or you agree to my terms and are granted _tentative_ parole.” Whirl slammed his helm again; this time his optic _cracked_.

“...What terms,” he eventually hissed, pained like a punctured actuator.

“You will promise to me that you will _not_ make trouble,” he began, in his customarily stern and booming _serious_ voice. Whirl muttered something about _trying_ , which seemed to satisfy him. “You will be placed with a member of the ethics committee to insure your behavior meets the standards of the Autobot code.” Whirl gurgled, hoping the noise would sufficiently convey the depths of his resigned disgust. It apparently did, because Magnus moved on. “Finally, you will be required to see an on-board counselor for weekly session.” Whirl turned his helm from where it had been resting against the wall, fixed Magnus with a wide, glowing glare.

“Can’t _wait_ ,” he sang. “I’ve been told my bad attitude comes from having a tiny port. I mean, anyone who’s _seen_ my port would know that was slag, but if you give me a _cute one_ I might let ‘em take a peek under my canopy.” 

Ultra Magnus did not rise to his bait, a sure sign that whatever was going on with the ship was, in fact, _severely_ taxing him.

“Someone will be assigned to you.” His tone was cold. “Now, let us move on.”

Magnus took him to Rodimus, who made him do some song and dance about how sorry he was for the whole Cyclonus thing. Was he still not over that? It had happened _forever_ ago. Then Cyclonus promised to kill him, which was _so five hours ago_. In any case, the more Whirl thought about self-termination by provocation, the more it began to sour on him. Why end his life with yet _another_ mecha getting one up on him? That wasn’t very _Wrecker_ of him. Not that he was, technically, at all a Wrecker anymore.

Whirl made a note to talk Cyclonus out of it sometime. Or kill him. Whichever.

The rest of the cycle had lived up to the promise set by its first half, in that it was processor-numbingly boring interspersed with periods of almost enjoyable violence. Rodimus called a meeting to tell the general populace how utterly fragged they all were, and quite rudely failed to address his extremely valuable advice for upping the coolness of their collective mission. While high command yammered, the mech from the ethics board-- his assigned roommate, apparently-- introduced himself. Whirl resolved to take every opportunity to inconvenience him. As far as he could tell, that was still a permissible way of taking out his anger on innocent bystanders. Lock him out of the suite, pretend to mishear when he wanted something from him, spill some fuel on his stuff on ‘accident.’ Acceptable hazing. No real harm. No one would have to be stuffed into a regeneration chamber.

Whirl honestly hadn’t expected the sparkeater.

It was remarkable just to see with his own optic that Sparkeaters were, in fact, _a thing_. An _ugly_ thing, not that he was one to judge. He almost got to shoot it, which was not as fun as _actually_ shooting it, but a lot more fun than missing the fiasco entirely. Of course it was Trailbreaker who had to go and ruin the fun with his shiny bubble trick. Whirl had wanted to see what kind of explosion could take out half of a ship, but no one else seemed to share his scientific curiosity. He followed along with the chase for a while, but Rodimus kept shooting down his offers to shoot the sparkeater up. Some dross about safety and survival and his _much better_ plan. 

He got tired of the whole thing pretty quickly once it became apparent that nothing was going to go _boom_ any time soon. At least he had tried to avenge his dear departed roommate of all of ten minutes. That had to be worth something, he thought as he wandered away from the engine room and back to his hab suite. 

Whirl’s suite no longer had a door. Or at least, not one that functioned. In his haste and during all the excitement, he had knocked a Whirl-sized hole in the steel. He didn’t like that very much, and stood in front of the entrance muttering oaths to Primus for a good long while. Without the door his suite was too _open_ , too empty and airy. _Bars_ would feel better. [[scrape your optic out of your helm]] In the end, he pried Animus’ berth from the floor and dragged it over to block up the hole. He savored the irritating skreel it made as he slid it across the floor. The prospect of bringing that level of discomfort to his neighbors at every start and end of the cycle cheered his spark considerably. 

He settled into a defragmentation cycle that his system alerts told him was long overdue.

When Whirl came back online-- for the second time finding himself in that Primus-fracked ship instead of the Allspark-- he met consciousness with a snort of static and an aching in his joints. He dozed stubbornly until he heard someone announcing that it was the first designated refueling period of the cycle. He rallied to rouse himself, though he’d rather have thrown himself in the Pit than join the rest of the crew around the major dispensers. Even if he had felt keen on socialising, he had the tendency to scrape-off every mecha he graced with his presence, intentionally or otherwise. He had a bad history and a worse reputation to live down, after all. And while a brawl might be fun, it wouldn’t be _good_. Magnus had been pretty clear about the fact that any future outbursts of violence would get him sent straight to the brig. And then, when they figured out while the frag they were, back to prison for the remainder of his functioning. Which was exactly what that whole ballet with the sweeps’ corpses was supposed to fix, but either Primus was without mercy or Unicron found his mess of an existence funny, because that hadn’t worked out in the _least_. 

Whirl decided not to dwell on his memories of the bunker, the smell of stale and fresh fuel and the cool dry air. Rodimus had given him a map of the ship when he was ‘welcomed aboard,’ and he brought it up, scanning for a fuel source that was somewhere small and isolated, unlikely to be a social hub. One of the recreation areas looked promising: a small datapad library, equipped with a dispenser and several seats, located by the munitions stores. He queued up directions to the room as he untangled his limbs and slumped gracelessly off of his slab. He stabbed impatiently at the door’s operation panel with a talon, his antennae twitching at the buzz of denial it issued, before remembering the makeshift replacement he had installed the previous cycle. Sliding the berth aside would be too much effort. He grabbed it by an edge and tugged it unceremoniously to the ground, while it made a sound loud enough that several mechen in the hall twitched. Funny. He initiated the directions and thought about oblivion.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl manages to lose a battle of wits against Rung, who doesn’t even realise said battle is happening.

When he arrived at the recreation room it was empty except for a table with three chairs, a cabinet full of datapads, an energon dispenser, and a small orange mecha engrossed in a tablet. The mecha was perched on a chair: hunched over slightly, one hand clenched in a fist in front of their mouth, one pede tapping, field held close to their frame. One mecha. That wasn’t so bad. They didn’t look much like a threat, which meant fighting them would be boring, which meant the idea hardly rated as a temptation. Good.

Whirl made his way over to the dispenser, input his credit code and collected the first of what would most likely be several cubes. His systems were still nagging him periodically about the dwindling reserves in his tank-- he had burned up a lot of fuel beating down Cyclonus, and leaked even more out in the aftermath. He should have let Ratchet patch him up. Not that he would’ve. He held his cube delicately between the tips of his claws, made another cautious sweep of the room with his optic.

It was hard to tell if the other mecha had even noticed him come in. Their optics were hidden behind a pair of scopes. If they had noticed, the ‘bot-- Whirl narrowed his optic. _Was it a ‘bot_? He couldn’t make out an Autobrand on them, but they didn’t have a Decepticon badge either. _NAIL_? They looked small, high caste, eminently breakable. They were some sort of grounder, maybe a rover? Whatever they were, it wasn’t something that would be useful in a warzone. They hadn’t so much as glanced up when a hulking empuratee with a thorax full of guns and a field that radiated irritation came into the room. That sure sounded like a NAIL to him.

But they also looked familiar, in a ‘ _haven’t I beaten the scrap out of you somewhere_ ’ way. 

Of course, a _lot_ of mechen looked familiar to Whirl in that kind of way. Pretty much every Genericon looked like that to him. He tilted his helm, cycled his rotors. Oh well. He made his way over to the table, settling his frame into the chair opposite the reading mecha. He stretched his legs over the surface of the slab with a rev of his engines, being sure to scrape his pedes loudly against the steel and then rest them within fieldspace of the other mecha’s face. [[kick them]] When they didn’t react to his display he dipped his proboscis into the cube and intook a portion of fuel. _He knew this mecha_. Where would he know some NAIL from, anyway?

“Hey,” he nudged the mecha’s arm with his pede, winning a mildly perturbed glance in response. “Do I know you from somewhere?” The orange mecha’s expression turned to surprise, optic ridges arching, and they let out a burst of laughter.

“Is that a _joke_?” they asked in a tone that read to Whirl like offense. The rotary bristled, guns clicking to attention and antenna lowering. Yeah, very funny. Of course _their type_ wouldn’t associate with him.

“Forget I asked,” he growled, sweeping his legs off of the table and moving to rise from his chair. The other mecha made an unparseable expression and lifted their hands in supplication.

“Oh no, you’ve misunderstood. You tried to kill me yesterday.” Whirl paused. He didn’t remember that. Not that he doubted it. It sounded like him, to do something like that. It was more of a matter of _when_ and _where_ than _if_. “In the med bay, when you first woke up,” the mecha prompted. “You throttled me quite energetically.”

“Oh, yeah.” With that mystery solved, Whirl settled back into his seat and turned his attention back to his fuel. Once he’d drained the first cube, he returned to the dispenser and procured his second. It would be a lot easier if he could get multiple cubes at once, but that would require _holding_ multiple cubes at once. He might have tried for that, if he were alone, but he wasn’t about to risk dropping fuel all over the floor. Stuff like that attracted _pity_. Whirl didn’t like pity. He turned around and was a bit perturbed to find that the other mecha was staring at him. 

His plating prickled. He flared it slightly and sauntered back to the table. The mecha had probably just realised who he was. Well, besides ‘the ‘bot who almost decapitated me.’ He thought, half in arrogance and half in practicality, that if this was anything but a colony mecha they _should_ recognise him. He’d been a Wrecker, hadn’t he? He had that scope for a face and those vicious claws, didn’t he? The orange mecha rested their chin in one of their hands and tilted their helm.

“My designation is Rung, of The Pious Pools, he/him/his.” The glyph he used for his designation was old fashioned, rough and pronounced archaically. Whirl took a moment to wonder how he’d ended up on a ship full of mechen with identical pronouns. Had _‘he’_ pronouns been required for entrance or something? “I should have introduced myself when you came in but,” he made a curious gesture over his helm, like the spinning of rotor blades. “I skipped over it. Sorry.” [[crack his optics in]]

Whirl ignored him. 

He concentrated instead on filtering his fuel: bare essentials with cloying additives. Medical-grade without the filtration. This was the kind of fuel to intake fast and be done with. Not that he had much of a palette to offend anymore. He stood, still pointedly ignoring the other mecha, and retrieved a third cube from the dispenser. He didn’t bother returning to his chair this time, downed his fuel quickly in front of the wall, staring at the machine’s numerical pad. As he retrieved his fourth cube-- still not nearly enough to quiet those obnoxious low-fuel alerts-- he stole a glance back to the table. The other mecha still hadn’t picked up his datapad.

“ _What?_ ” If he was angling for an apology, he wasn’t getting one. What did he expect, hovering over a damaged mecha that had just been denied a killing blow? _Not a bright move, specs_. What had he wanted? Hadn’t Ratchet told him he was better off scrapped? 

“May I ask your designation?” he asked.

“Whirl. Polyhex. He,” the rotary replied, in a clipped tone and impersonal glyphs. He was probably about to report him for something. _Great_. Whirl hadn’t even noticed doing anything worthy of high command’s reprimand in the few minutes he’d been in the room. He’d tried half-sparkedly to kill him, but that was ages ago. Speaking of which… “Would anyone miss this little twerp if I just shot him out an airlock?”

Rung laughed. Whirl realised, belatedly, that he had asked that question aloud.

“No,” he said, voice too light for the meaning of his glyphs. “No, I can’t say they would.” He lifted his helm from where it had been resting in his hand, fixed his gaze on the rotary. 

Whirl was used to being the mecha who cornered the market on creepy staring. Usually through his own intention: the single optic really messed with some mechen’s processors, especially if he could crank it bright enough. But what Whirl had learned theatrically Rung seemed to be accomplishing through purely natural talent. His face was blank and still and his scopes shone bright and eerie.

“Whirl. He,” he repeated, his glyphs precise and laborious recreations of Whirl’s own. “Whirl.” His optics went slightly dim, a clear indicator that he was combing his internal databanks for information. [[stop him]]

“Listen, Eyebrows,” Whirl started, pointedly bypassing his designation. No need to make him think they were getting friendly. Rung’s optics flashed as he was diverted from his search. 

“Yes, Whirl?”

“You a NAIL?”

“No. I work- _worked_ , among the Autobot ranks.”

“Then why would you have to look me up?” he asked, voice low with implied threat. _Yeah, thats right, I may be glitched but I know_ exactly _what you were just doing_.

“I was checking to see if you were on the list of my possible clients. I haven’t got all of the data transferred into immediate retrieval yet.” He rolled his shoulder slightly, made another strange motion with his hand. “Unfortunately, there are only five [1] of us on board, and the war has left many in need of our services, so our pools of potential clientele are large.” 

_Great_ , Whirl thought, _I’m talking to a Psy-Ops here_. A fragging _helm-needler_. The last kind of mecha he wanted to be stuck with right now. _Alright, time to whip out the big guns_. 

Since Eyebrows apparently wasn’t intimidated by the _literal_ big guns, Whirl would have to go with one of his less favored methods for harassing his way into some peace and quiet. He swaggered away from the wall with a practiced air of confidence, settled back in his chair and put his fuel aside. _Some_ mechen might be so wrapped up in acting ‘non-judgemental’ that they’d pretend not to mind a short-circuited empuratee sharing a room with them, but _every_ mecha minded a short-circuited empuratee _hitting on them_. 

“Ooo,” he cooed, pitching his voice to emphasize the warbling warp of a vocaliser filtered through the unnatural anatomy of a mutilated helm. “I didn’t know Roddy hired _pleasure-mechen_ for this cruise.” He fixed his optic in his best leer, glancing pointedly at the other mecha’s dextrous looking fingers. “ _Please_ tell me you know how to work a flight stabilizer, because it's been _forever_ since I’ve had a nice pair of hands on them.” Rung stared at him, tilted his helm, showed absolutely no appreciation for the grand show Whirl was currently putting on for his benefit.

“Apologies,” he said, “my phrasing was unclear. The class of mechen I was referring to was that of psychology specialists.” He smiled and gave a small shrug. “Actually, I’m unaware if there are interfacing specialists currently aboard. I could certainly inquire for you, if you would like. I’m not sure if they are classified as artisans or medics…” the mecha trailed off, seemed to be giving the matter serious attention. “In any case, you do not appear on my list.” 

Well, that had backfired. Okay, what about _oversensitive_ short-circuited empuratee?

“So, you think I’m glitched, do you?” he snapped, optic narrowing. Rung frowned, sympathetic but not cowed.

“I assure you, I only checked as a matter of protocol. It is necessary that I do not assume the circuit type of any of the mechen onboard, and that I-”

“Well, I _am_!” Whirl declared, struck by a sudden fear that that last line might have made the doctor cross ‘short-circuited’ off the list of Whirl’s most unappealing characteristics. “ _Very_ glitched. Short-circuited to the point where _Ultra Magnus himself_ says I gotta talk to someone about it or get thrown out the airlock!”

“I should _hope he_ would know better than to use such language,” Rung said, frown deepening. “Whirl, if you wish to report an abusive environment, I can–” He was finally sounding worried, but not _enough_ and not about the _right thing_.

“So, you know who the lucky mecha who _does_ get to deal with all this twisted circuitry is?” He blurted out before the smaller mechen could suggest something ludicrous like _filing a report_ just because he’d somehow managed to get every Cybertronian alive to prefer him dead.

“...I don’t know who your primary care provider will be at the moment, just that I’ve been ruled out, bu-”

“Ruled out?” Whirl curved his optic in what he hoped would read as derision and gestured at his helm with his talons. “You’re not good enough to handle _all this_?” 

Rung’s optics flickered again. “Medics have specialties,” he explained. “Some of us are better suited to tackle certain subjects. There are some topics which I cannot objectively, professionally address due to my own psychological makeup.” Primus _. Okay antique, lets try this again_. Short-circuited empuratee hitting on you, this time _explicit and persistent_. 

“What I’m hearing,” he sneered, “is that you have a _raging_ empuratee fetish, and if they let me into your office you’d just frag the _scrap_ outta me.” 

Rung’s reaction was limited to a small downward twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Personal relationships, as well as interfacing, between counselors and clients is deeply unethical and _inherently_ abusive. I should hope that any medic who would commit such a crime would not be permitted on board.” Primus now he sounded _worried_ again. Worried _for him_.

“So the fetish thing is still in play, then?” He was having trouble taking the high whistle of panic out of his voxcoder. Why wasn’t he disgusted right now, why wasn’t he _offended_? Why wasn’t he _leaving_? “Sounds like you want to ‘face me so bad that you talked all of your buddies into taking on this _mess_ just so you could have me all to yourself?” His laugh sounded strained, even to his own audials. “Good. I like a mecha who goes for what they want.”

“I actually find the fetishization of disabilities to be... distasteful.” How and _why_ was he taking him _seriously_ right now? “Even if I had such a proclivity, it’s been a mere cycle since we took off. A cycle I primarily spent in mortal terror for my life. When would I have had time to request such an arrangement?” Was that a _joke_? He sounded _amused_. Okay, Whirl was going to have to be _way_ more straightforward.

“You know Doc, you haven’t said you _aren’t_ interested in swapping charge with me.”

“No, I haven’t,” Rung said, and he was _definitely_ amused right there. “Is there a reason you think I _wouldn’t_ be?”

Whirl just _stared_ at him.

The mecha’s bizarre reactions to his behavior already had him thrown for a loop, but **that** little comment _really_ sent him reeling. Why _wouldn’t he_ want to swap charge with him? Like it wasn’t obvious? Like it didn’t make _sense_? He could get if the antique was too old fashioned, maybe even too naive, to get what he was implying. He could get if he just expressed fear and disgust in weird ways. He could even wrap his helm, albeit with some difficulty, around the idea that he was just entirely unphased by interfacing and violence. But _what in the Pit_ was- he couldn’t be _serious_... Rung continued gazing in his general direction, something almost reminiscent of a smirk on his lips.

[[call his bluff]]

“Ooo, Doc,” he laughed, vocals high and reedy. “If you keep talking like that, I just might have to ask you _out_. How about we meet up back here next refueling time and talk. Just _you and me_.” _That_ got a reaction, but not the one he was expecting. Rung’s antennae perked up and his optics flashed. His pseudo-smirk blossomed into a genuine smile and _frag that was actually really cute, oh **no**_.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, emitting a small beep. For the first time since they’d started speaking, he seemed at a loss for glyphs. He glanced down at his hands, fiddling his fingers. Primus... was he _flattered_? Whirl knew the mecha couldn’t have been a big deal-- the fact that all Whirl got threatened with for almost offlining him was _jail time_ showed that much was true-- but surely he respected himself enough that he wouldn’t- “I- I’m not sure about a _date_ , but I would certainly enjoy talking again.”

Adaptus’ _cog_. Who let this mecha be a psych specialist when he quite clearly had _clinically_ dismal self esteem? Whirl didn’t even know what to say. He just sat there. _Defeated_. After another moment of silent fidgeting, the mecha trilled surprise. He stood abruptly, smiling and bowing in apology.

“I have a meeting I must attend.” Ok, well, at least he had the decency to bolt the second he realised what he had just agreed to. “But I look forward to seeing you again later in the cycle. Perhaps, if it goes well, we might call it date after all.” Whirl watched Rung subspace his tablet and leave, optic wide in puzzled disbelief.

 _Unicron’s rusted connector_ , what had he gotten himself _into_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1I made Rung one of a team of psychologists in this AU because, with all due respect to James Roberts, it’s patently ridiculous to have a single therapist for a ship of ~200 individuals. In this AU there are a total of five psychiatric professionals onboard. Whirl will be treated by one of them. Rung will be working with the rest of his canon patients. [ return to text ]  
> 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl finds out what he’s gotten himself into.

Morbid curiosity was chief among the emotions that tugged Whirl back to the recreation station as the next refueling time approached. He had mulled it over, this strange mecha and his stranger behavior, and he was fairly certain that this was a pity date. Another possibility was that the mech had been playing at a game of conjugal turbochicken and overshot badly. Pity seemed most likely, considering what he had seen of the helm doc’s disposition. Still, a pity date could turn into a pity frag, and Whirl hadn’t gotten to swap paint since the Wreckers. Even then a good frag had been few and far between; he hadn’t been lying about how long it had been since his stabilizers had gotten attention. 

There was always the chance that he’d show up and Rung would be nowhere to be found. Thinking about that made his spark twist with an uncomfortable pain that he liked to think himself _better_ than. If something as absurd and sensitive as _rejection_ could hurt Whirl, he’d have been reduced to a smoking crater-- hah, he _wished--_ the second he’d gotten thrown out of business and into the Dead End.

So he made his way back to the datapad library with affected boredom in his stance-- as if expecting nothing more out of his destination than a few cubes and some peace and quiet-- and called half-sparked insults after mechen he passed. [[make them kill you]] If he played his cards right he could get into a scuffle just decent enough to drive him to distraction without sending him straight to the brig. No one took his bait. Cowards. Perhaps that was for the best since, when he stuck his helm into the room, he found the orange mecha already there.

“Huh,” he said, because what in the Pit was he _supposed_ to say? [[say you’re going to rip his spark out and feed it to him]] Not that.

“Hello!” the mecha chirped, pointing to two cubes set carefully on in front of the chair Whirl had taken earlier that cycle. “I had extra rations,” he explained, smile wide. It had been millions of years since someone had been so pleased to see Whirl. he’d liberated Decepticon POW camps full of mechen who’d seemed less than happy to see him. But this little mecha looked _thrilled_. He took the seat, clasping one of the cubes gently between the tips of his talons. It was of a highest grade that Whirl’s rations-- mecha must have sprung for a cushier fueling package-- glowing glittering magenta, like-

“Did you know that Sweeps have innermost energon?” Well, there that was. Good ol’ glitched out Whirlybird brain, always knew the worst things to say. At least this would be over quick.

“ _Do_ they?” It took Whirl a moment to realise Rung had _actually said that_ , in a tone that indicated curiosity rather than outrage or disgust.

“Yeah. Not a lot of it but-” Whirl gestured at his thorax. “Around the pseudospark.”

“I would never have guessed.” Rung was leaning forward, one of his servos tapping on his sparkplate, optics bright behind his scopes. “I’ll admit to finding the Sweeps intriguing. The potential implications the method of their creation has for alternative construction methods and spark duplication. The retelling of their origin story in the context of constructivism is particularly fascinating.” He tilted his helm and grinned. “I was at Kimia when they attacked, you know. I am fairly certain I saw _uninfected_ Sweeps eating mechen.” His voxcoder clicked abruptly and he sat back in his chair, glanced at his lap. “I wanted to survive a bit more than I wanted to sate my scientific curiosity, so I never managed to get a good look at them.”

“If only someone had held one still long enough for you to give them the Ambus, eh?” Whirl joked. Rung’s helm immediately shot up, his mouth thinning into an angry line. Scrap, he hadn’t even meant that as a barb.

“The Ambus Test is archaic drivel with repulsive geneses,” he huffed, “It is founded on Shapeism and Typical-Circuit-Pattern Supremacy masquerading as seditious.”

Whirl stared at him. “What.” 

Rung grimaced, averted his optics and pulsed his biolights in embarrassment. “Sorry. I become loquacious when emotionally aroused, particularly under duress.” 

Whirl’s optic did not waver. “What.”

“I use fancy words when I am upset,” Rung clarified. “I’m angry at Cybertronian society, not at you. I understand that the flaws of the Ambus Test are not common knowledge. Please do me the favor of disregarding my outburst.” After a pause his antennae perked, he turned his gaze back to Whirl. “How did you know about the innermost energon?”

Wasn’t that the million shanix question. [[show him yours]] Whirl shrugged his shoulders.

“You don’t need the gorey details, Doc.” Rung actually _laughed_ at that.

“Whirl, need I remind you that, like you and almost every other mecha on this ship, I survived four million years of war? If that fails to convince you, know that I _also_ endured both med school and the Functionist regime.” He raised an eyebrow, smirking, optics glittering with mischief. “Try me.”

“I kind of found some Sweeps corpses laying around,” Whirl answered, weakly. “I thought it might be, uh,” Whirl had never given much thought to phrasing things politely. Euphemisms were not in his repertoire. “I guess I wanted to ...investigate?”

“That’s interesting. You aren’t a medic- at least, not to my knowledge. If I may.... What makes you so interested in mechanology?”

“I…” He didn’t know. Well, he probably did, but thinking about it was like sticking his arm in a smelting pool. “I dunno. I like things that work together.” No no, that was too close. Rung was a helm doc, he could figure him out. [[kill him]] How had he rested his defenses that much. [[grab him by the neck cut his glossa out find an airlock _he can’t know_ ]] _Shut up, shut **up**!_ “This isn’t a therapy session,” he growled, talons digging into the surface of the table. Rung started in surprise, but instead of wilting away he made a soothing chirr, extended his field so that it brushed Whirl’s with assurance and apology.

“I’m not trying to analyse you, Whirl. I prefer to be _paid_ for that.” He smiled gently, voice turning cautiously playful. “Unless you have a hundred-fifty shanix at your disposal, I just want to know more about you. I am under the impression that that is what happens on dates. Or am I terribly misinformed?” 

“Yeah, yeah, funny.” Whirl pried his talons carefully out of the surface of the table. His glyphs came out flat and curt. “What makes _you_ so interested?” Rung ground his voxcoder, sitting back in his chair and giving the question diligent thought before responding. 

“I am fascinated by mechanical systems,” he said, finally, in a careful voice colored ever so slightly with awe. “When you think about it, we are all little more than a series of parts. Cogs, circuits, wires, actuators, tanks, fluid, fans, joints, struts, lines, and fuel. A brain module and a spark, so delicate and volatile and yet so... _enduring_. I appreciate how each component works in tandem with the others to sustain mechanical life. Our frames, every part of them, are at once so unique and so interconnected-” Rung’s hands were flitting through the air as he spoke, his grin wide. Whirl could feel his field flaring and sparking and twisting with excitement even from across the table. “-kibble, plating, size, and alt all differ from one mecha to another, but inside we are so similar. Inside we are pulleys, gear teeth, magnets, and springs. As a race we can interchange T-cogs, chronometers, plating, and fluids so easily. Very few mechanical races, and almost no organic ones, have that type of consistency from one individual to another. Our frames can be combined and enhanced and broken down through remarkably standard procedure.” He interlaced his fingers and smiled down at them. “They belong to us, yet we can also give them over to others. Every piece of our frames makes a being, every frame makes a race, every race makes up _life itself_. Small individual things, seemingly insignificant on their own, banded together to make a whole and significant collective. Infinitely complex and yet self-same at any scale. Chaos assembled into order. I feel… I think it’s beautiful.” He looked up, met Whirl’s optic with his scopes and a field swirling with what Whirl thought might be giddy embarrassment. 

Oh frag, oh _frag_. Whirl couldn’t break his gaze.

Whirl couldn’t tell him how beautiful that sounded to him. Whirl couldn’t tell him he felt the same way, had _always_ felt the same way. Whirl couldn’t tell him about looking inside things and making sense of them, about his shop. Whirl couldn’t tell him that for all his aching he’s never been able to find words for it, that it had always sounded so rough and silly when he tried. Whirl couldn’t tell him that even though he had not caught the subtleties of most of those glyphs he _knew_ that was the closest someone has ever come to speaking directly to his spark. Whirl couldn’t cut himself open and show Rung where their organs mehed and matched and pumped and spun and _functioned_ identical. Whirl wasn’t even sure he could speak. he sent an unvoiced thanks to Primus when Rung only let the silence settle for a moment before continuing, voice gone a bit more hesitant but hands frantic with the same enthusiasm.

“I entered my chosen field, psychology, because the neurocircuitry system is among the most ill defined and misunderstood systems within the cybertronian frame. In my opinion, at least. Mechen often do not realise, but neurocircuits are remarkably durable, and so _resilient_. Perhaps the most resilient and most vital part of the frame, sparks aside.” He licked his upper lip and bent his gaze to the table. “Of course, I do not often get the chance to _physically_ investigate the Cybertronian frame, but my fascination has other manifests. I have a hobby of building model ships. I like putting the pieces together, making a smaller replica of something so vast. It’s silly, but assembling delicate things reminds me of the connection each small part of my reality has to the universe at large. It is comforting, in a way.”

Whirl was still staring at the place where Rung’s optics once were. “Ditto,” he croaked out, to his own surprise. It was somehow both a victory and a defeat at the same moment.

“Oh!” Rung perked up noticeably, plating flaring. “Do you craft?”

“I..” he _used_ to _._ he _had_. he had crafted, once, for the happiest few months of his wretched life. He had crafted, once, before everything had fallen to pieces and his hands became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. Before his spark became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. _Primus_ , he hadn’t known he could even _want_ that anymore. He hadn’t known his spark could still _ache_ for it, had buried that need so deep he had thought it _dead_. [[tell him to frag off]] “I’ve… dabbled,” he finished, impotent.

“In model building?” he asked, too kind for Whirl to tolerate.

“So!” Whirl slammed his claws against the table, felt guilt and satisfaction battling for dominance in his processor when Rung nearly jumped out of his chair. “You’re into brains and scrap?”

“I- Yes, I would say that is true.”

“Sweeps ain’t got no brain. Well, not the module proper.” It was a frantic feint at changing the topic, and to his surprise it _worked_ , Rung’s smile reappearing instantly.

“Is that _so_?” His voice was hushed with excitement. It was strange and oddly endearing to see such an unassuming mecha get riled up by such a morbid topic.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Just the stem.”

Rung practically _glowed_ to hear that news. As Whirl finished the two cubes provided to his, and acquired another couple from the dispenser, he explained how the Sweeps fit into something he called _The Collective Unconscious_. Whirl though that would be a pretty cool designation for a ship, or possibly a band, but apparently it was _actually_ some brain hence theory of his. Not wanting to look any denser than he already did, Whirl pretended to follow what the other mecha was saying perfectly, nodding and humming when it seemed like something particularly important was being said. 

Despite his excellent acting, Rung seemed to take notice of the sections wherein he became _completely_ lost, and would pause to define or simplify his point. Whirl wanted to be insulted, but somehow couldn’t summon the bitterness. It was actually pretty interesting stuff, the idea that every Cybertronian had this spark-deep connection with each other. Not just the allspark, but something cultural and mechanological, sort of like the Insecticons’ hivemind business. A lot of it sounded a little too much like Drift’s weird hippy New Age Scrap for Whirl to get completely behind, but Rung didn’t get mad when he couldn’t stop himself from pointing out the parts that sounded like dross to him. If anything, he got even _more_ excited when a chance came to debate finer points. It was… it was fragging _cute_ , to be honest. 

It certainly helped that Rung had a nice voice: warm and low and almost musical. Whirl wondered if he had gotten augs for his voxcoder. Being in the helm shrinking business couldn’t be easy if your voice was as grating as, well, _his_ for example. Rung’s field began to open up as he spoke, just as it had when he was babbling about Cybertronian frames. His electromagnetic aura was remarkably lively, marked with flashes of interest and excitement. Listening to him twitter on was almost intoxicatingly calming. Whirl felt actuators he hadn’t even realised had been tensed start to relax and soften as he spoke.

“So,” Rung said at last, voice turning shy, flighty hands finally coming to rest in his lap. “I believe I’ve done more than enough talking about myself. You mentioned you dabbled in-”

Whirl felt every one of those aforementioned actuators tense up again.

“Why’d you pick this room for refueling, anyway?” That was one nice thing about having no fragging filter on his voxcoder, he was never at a loss for random dross to shout. “You just like datapads?”

“It’s located nearby my office,” Rung said, seemingly unphased by the whiplash change of topic. “I like that it is somewhat… out of the way. Not many people come here, so it is rarely crowded. I don’t like crowds. Too many fields too close together, it becomes difficult for me to-” He stopped speaking abruptly, clasped his hands together and furrowed his brow. “It feels good here. I like the hum of the engines. I expect to continue refueling here for the foreseeable future.”

“I just wanted to get away from everyone,” Whirl snorted, plating loosening slightly. At least this mecha was predictable enough to take _some_ of Whirl’s bait. Whirl had never met someone more easily distracted by small talk than insults, but he wasn’t going to ask for a gift drone’s maintenance history. 

“Perhaps we can stagger our schedules so that our visits don’t overlap?” Rung chirped, brows furrowing with concern. “Or, do you plan to look for another refueling station?” He was so courteous that Whirl almost _punched_ him.

“Too complicated. You’ll just have to learn to tolerate this face,” he sang, gesturing at his helm. Instead of laughing, Rung looked confused and distraught. Right, Whirl remembered, he had a bad habit of taking self deprecation way too seriously. “Joking,” he clarified. “That’s a joke.”

“Oh!” Rung’s optical ridges shot straight up, he opened his intake and let out a _hopelessly_ fake laugh. “Complicated!” he exclaimed in a strained tone that indicated he was senselessly groping at what the joke was supposed to have been. 

For some reason quite beyond him, Whirl’s spark gave a very undignified flutter at this. Mechen rarely laughed at his jokes, none the less _pretended_ to laugh at his jokes. [[tell him he’s fragging adorable]] No. Well, maybe. Some other time.

Rung stopped laughing as abruptly as he had started, reset his voxcoder with a click. “The refueling period is almost over,” he muttered to himself as much as to Whirl, looking down at his hands. “I have to admit I’ve very much enjoyed this… date. I have a free night five cycles from now.”

Whirl wasn’t sure if he thought he was being coy or obvious. His own voxcoder felt suddenly stuck with grease, as heavy as his spark was light.

“...Five cycles from now, you say?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Date 2: This Time It’s Personal

They had their second date at Swerve’s, sipping fuel in a corner booth while the Lost Light hovered just within the orbit of Delphi. The bar had been open for perhaps two cycles: there was still dust on some of the tables, no set menu, and a stale smell in it’s atmosphere. Whirl had only heard of it because he’d passed some mechen complaining about the weak engex it served, and Rung hadn’t heard of it at all, but it was the closest thing to a social hub that he could find onboard. Rung had assured him that he would be content with chatting around their regular dispenser. That's what they had been doing regularly since their first date: meeting in the recreation room and talking about rumors and politics and the business of the day. Sometimes Rung would read a passage out of the datapad he was currently engaged with. And that sort of thing was relaxing and effortless and _nice_. Rung certainly seemed perfectly happy with that arrangement. But it was also strange, hidden away, certainly not what Whirl thought of as a ‘date.’ _Perhaps_ , he had thought, _he didn’t want to let himself be seen with him in_ public. 

Whirl had shrugged and said he was feeling nostalgic for prewar times, back when you would take a mecha you fancied to a fuel house or a play or something. 

If Rung thought it was strange that Whirl went straight for the only corner booth in the bar, the only table you could sit at with your back against the wall and get a good view of every exit, he didn’t say anything. Which was good, because Whirl hadn’t figured out a good excuse for that habit yet. While they settled in and got their high grade-- well, after _Whirl_ got his high grade, Rung stuck strictly to the weak stuff-- they exchanged accounts of what had happened to them that cycle, their theories about the purpose behind the Delphi excursion. Rung offered very practical and well thought out explanations about staffing and resource allocation. Whirl’s posited that Pharma made up a fake plague just to get Ratchet’s attention and that the away party was going to walk in on the jet posing seductively on a pile of medical charts. 

“Ooo Dr. Rachet, I didn’t hear you come in over the sound of _me saving more lives than you_ ,” Whirl trilled, the pitch of his voice heightened seductively. He whistled, kicking up his legs at strange angles and wiggling his stabilizers in a sloppy impression of a preening seeker. 

Rung put a hand over his mouth in an attempt to muffle a laugh of giddy amusement, then spent the next five minutes choking on a clot of midgrade that had strayed out of his intake and into his ventilation system. Whirl thought of offering him a firm slap on the back [[jam a talon into his neck]] but considering his claws and his strength and the fact that he had no idea how sensitive Rung’s kibble was [[strip his fans from the inside]] he reconsidered. Luckily for the both of them Rung managed to pick the obstruction loose by jamming a few fingers into the back of his intake, which Whirl heroically managed to only gape at a _little_ bit. When Rung had recovered, he reset his voxcoder and shrugged his antenna in apology.

“Do you mind if, in the hopes of avoiding embarrassing myself further, I change the topic?” he asked, once his voice was back online. Whirl settled into a more relaxed position-- he hadn’t even noticed he’d been hunching over the table-- leaned back in his seat and shrugged.

“I-” Rung paused with a click, frowned, began again.” I was hoping you could tell me a little bit more about yourself?”

“That’d be a first.” Whirl mimicked a snort, a bad habit he’d picked up from Verity and never bothered to unlearn. “ _Normally_ mechen can’t wait for me to shut up about myself.”

“On our first date you seemed very intent on evading my questions.” Rung tilted his helm, a movement Whirl was beginning to understand as a show of interest. “I assumed you were uncomfortable with scrutiny, but perhaps I was asking the wrong things?” [[gouge his optics out he was asking about the night they _killed_ you get him before he gets you]] He hadn’t meant to. [[hurry hurry kill him he knows he _knows about you_ ]] _I’ll drink until you shut up I swear to Primus below._

“Okay, Eyebrows,” he said too loud, too fast, voice straining to rise above a clatter that probably wasn’t even there. “How about we make a deal? I’ll tell you some personal scrap... _if_ you answer a question first.” The glyphs left his frame before he even realised what he was saying. As per usual. He wasn’t expecting Rung’s field to suddenly snap tight to his frame, for him to sit abruptly upright. He’d just been trying to buy himself some time. _What did I say this time_? 

“My accord is dependent on the specific nature of the query,” he replied, enunciating carefully. His voice was _weird_.

“Why did you say yes?” he asked, viciously tamping down on a flare of embarrassment that attempted to rise to his field.

“...Say yes?”

“To me,” he clarified.

“...To you?”

“Yeah, uh,” he gestured at the bar, at his cockpit, at their fuel. “To the date. Date _s_.”

“Oh.” Rung’s face may have relaxed, the flicker of his features was too minor to divine. In the very least Whirl could feel his field expand slightly. “Because I wanted to.” He paused, perhaps thinking that qualified as a sufficient explanation, but two could play at the stare-at-a-mecha-until-they-talk game. ”It’s going to make me sound terribly _sad_.” Whirl’s gaze did not shift from his mouth. He let out a small huff before continuing. “I was very flattered that you... noticed me.”

“ _Noticed_ you?”

“Noticed me. Talked to me. I tend to be... overlooked.”

“Oh, come off it.” Whirl scoffed, choosing to sidestep the fact that, on the occasion of their first meeting, he had been aiming less at flirtation and more at harassment. “You’re bright _orange,_ for Primus’ sake, and you’ve got those _ridiculous_ optical insignias, and that fragging _sparkport_.” Whirl underlined his point by jabbing a talon at the aforementioned window. Was that rude? That was definitely rude. Whatever. “Who _doesn’t_ notice you?” Rung laughed-- _Unicron sucking dross out of Primus’ exhaust Whirl was starting to **like** that laugh_\-- and shook his helm.

“Whirl, you do realise we’ve already _met_ , don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m sayin’ if we _hadn’t_ met. I’d still notice you.”

“Not now. Before.”

“Before what?”

“I was one of the Psy-Ops specialists who did assessments for prospective Wreckers,” he explained. [[tell him he’s lying]]

Whirl narrowed his optic, antenna flattening. “No you _weren’t_.”

“Well, I wasn’t _your_ interviewer,” he hummed pensively. “I believe you became part of the team before assessments became standard. But we’ve seen each other close to a dozen times.”

“Dross.” 

Rung exvented. Part of Whirl urged him to do something bizarre and unreasonable, like _apologise_. The rest of him would rather burn in the Smelting Pits than let someone get a lie past him.

“Do you have a copy of any Wrecker Recruitment Vids?” he asked. The slope of his eyebrows seemed more tired than angry, which was something at least.

Whirl synthesized another snort, but pulled up the folder anyway. “Yeah.”

“Clip 065-A74 at 1:26. I’m standing right next to you.”

…And so he was. Sort of blurry and partially blocked by Roadbuster’s fist, but orange and blue and with the same silly eyebrows. Even though Whirl couldn’t remember seeing the little mecha to save his own rotors.

“Truth be told, I am not at all used to being pursued,” he continued, in his infinite mercy, saving Whirl the embarrassment of having to acknowledge his unwarranted defensiveness. “I have managed to acquire some friends, but very few datemates. I fear I’m _terribly_ out of practice. Not that I accepted out of desperation, mind! I just… do not expect mechen to be interested in me.” He paused, tapped out a frantic tattoo on the table with his fingers. “Why did I say yes to you, to this date? I said yes because I find you attractive. I said yes because you are frank, and interesting, and very funny, and I wish to continue dating you.”

“Yeah?” Whirl really didn’t know what to say to that. “You’re pretty cute yourself, Doc.” Rung’s optics flashed bright and then dimmed, his field shimmered with that tone which Whirl hadn’t been able to believe was flattery. This helm shrink couldn’t be any good for him.

“So,” he said, leaning forward and tucking a fist beneath his chin. “I was promised ‘personal scrap’?” Right, _that_.

“Well, I used to be a Wrecker,” he answered, glancing down to watch his claws flex open and closed. “You already know about that, though.”

“I knew you were a member of the team, yes. I cannot help but feel there is more to being a Wrecker than just a title, though.”

“You want to know what wreckin’ life is like?” Rung smiled, laughed, nodded. Alright, war stories. That, at least, was something Whirl could do. Whirl puffed up his plating and flexed his stabilizers. “I got _just_ the tale of gore and glory for ya. Something Fisitron would eat their right servo to hear!”

Rung was a good listener. Of course, it _was_ his _job_ to be a good listener, but it wasn’t like he was getting paid for this, so Whirl still chalked it up as a victory. He nodded silently, optics bright and focused, at first, but as Whirl continued to regale him he occasionally interjected to ask questions, or prompt him for more details. 

It was easy to talk to Rung. Surprisingly easy, confusingly easy, would’ve even qualified as _suspiciously_ easy had Whirl not known his profession. He had an air of quiet stillness-- even in motion, even when talking-- like nothing Whirl could name. He seemed to absorb and process his chatter effortlessly, rarely intruding and never interrupting. Whirl could almost see how he’d missed him. And then he smiled at something Whirl had said-- and it was just so unpracticed and genuine and gleeful-- and he couldn’t imagine not noticing him.

Somewhere along the line Whirl found himself wandering away from the brash violence of his typical bar stories and into a more personal side of his time under Springer. He sidestepped the Impactor-Era scrap, and though Rung surely knew about him, maybe even about Pova, he made no motion to ask about it. Still, as the night went on he managed to pry a handful of personal details out of Whirl: his fuel preferences, his thoughts on the quest he’d gotten roped into, his favorite vids both Cybertronian and alien in origin. Whirl might have gotten mad about that, denounced his tricky helm doctor ways, but he was so open and easy about inquiring that he barely minded. He hardly noticed the time passing, the bar clearing out, until Rung pointed out that they’d really need to begin defragmentation protocols soon if they wanted to be up and about a full capacity the next cycle.

His attempt to pay the tab was thwarted by Whirl’s foresight-- he’d already arranged for all the fuel to be charged to his account-- and before he could protest Whirl was already offering to walk him back to his suite. Rung accepted graciously. They spent the walk across the ship in silence, and Whirl was surprised to find himself enjoying that as well. It was nice, to be alone and quiet with someone like Rung. It was nice to feel a field against his that was not soured with fear or disgust or hostility. He hadn’t thought about that before. It had been so long that he had forgotten how it once was-- to be with another mech without the weight of revulsion, without the toll of constant bombarding disquiet. 

Rung stopped, too early for his taste, just outside his suite. His servo moved up, fingers tracing the line of biolights along his gardbrace[1] unconsciously.

“Whirl?” he asked, head tilting up so their optics met.

“Yeah, Doc?”

“May I bunt[2] you?” Whirl barely resisted laughing in his face. The words implied _joke_ , but the tone, half lit optics implied _earnesty_. 

“You can try,” he answered. Rung strained upwards in an attempt to compensate for their disparate heights, balancing on the tips of his pedes, before grinding his voxcoder pointedly. Whirl snorted, taking pity on him and leaning down. He chirped and bowed slightly, pressing his crest against his forehelm, optics offlining. One hand snuck up to the side of his helm, cupping the curved metal, fingers trailing towards the back of his helm, where they traced the rim of his audial disk, thumb brushing against his antennae, light enough to be a coincidence. _Holy scrap_. Rung bent back his neck, angling his helm so that his lips met the rim of plating around Whirl’s optic. He bumped his lips against it, laying out a trail of contact from the tip of one pedipalp, down to it’s base, across the rim of his optical bell, to the base of the other pedipalp, and then to it’s own tip. Rung’s crest ground against Whirl’s forehelm as he moved. _Holy **fragging** scrap_. His servo wandered to the back of his neck and he pulled their helms together, denta parting to gently bite the metal between his pedipalps. He sent a shock of static between them with such flourish that Whirl suspected he was showing off on _purpose_. 

They lingered like that, helms pressed flush, for a moment. Then Rung pulled back, fingers trailing across the cables of his neck, glossa parting out to lick oral lubricant from his upper lip. It took Whirl a moment to realise the entirely undignified whirring he was hearing was coming from his fans.

“ _Primus_ you’re a good bunter.” Had he actually just _said_ that? Frack, he sounded like a pit forged _newform_. Embarrassing. Rung’s optics flashed, he covered his mouth with a hand and _giggled_ , and suddenly Whirl found himself unable to give a burning scrapheap what he sounded like.

“My, aren’t you a _flatterer_ ,” he teased.

“Come on Eyebrows, give yourself some credit.” He let out a short hacking burst of laughter. “Bunting _this_ face? I’m 90% optic, Eyebrows. That’s gotta be, like, the Ultimate Challenge Mode of bunting.” Rung knitted his eyebrows in confusion.

“Bunting is merely the act of meeting upper helms so that each partner’s optics points towards the others’ and that the maximum number of sensory ampullae[3] are stimulated,” he said.

“I mean, _technically_ sure,” Whirl allowed, “but when you don’t have a faceplate or a mouth or... really _any_ soft plating-”

“My assumption was that the majority of your facial ampullae are located in your forehelm and pedipalps. Was this incorrect? Would you prefer we try something else?” 

Whirl stopped himself _just_ short of saying that Rung could try anything he damn well _pleased_ on him.

“No, no that was fine- that was _great_ ,” Whirl vented, found himself suddenly aware that his arm was still pressing Rung’s frame to his side. He considered pushing him away and fleeing the scene, but the other mecha seemed perfectly comfortable, and in all honesty he _really_ didn’t want to let go.

“So,” Rung said, grinning with bashful mischief. “How about I treat _you_ next time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Gardbraces are pieces of plating that protect the shoulders and/or the sides of the thorax.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return1%E2%80%9D) ]  
> 2 Bunting is the act of touching foreheads. Since not all Cybertronians have mouths, they don't attach the same significance to mouth-to-mouth contact that some human cultures do. Socially and interpersonally speaking, bunting is the Cybertronian equivalent of kissing. Bunting is common amongst both romantic and platonic partners, though romantic partners tend to incorporate more secondary actions (nuzzling, exchanging static shocks, intake contact, and fieldplay) into their bunts, while platonic partners tend to bunt longer.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return2%E2%80%9D) ]  
> 3 Ampullae are electromagnetic sensors or electroreceptors, located throughout the Cybertronian body but most densely on the face and hands.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return3%E2%80%9D) ]


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q: How do you make Primus laugh? A: Make plans.

Whirl let out a sustained whine. It pierced the atmosphere of the small room, redoubled off of the walls in pitchy echoes. He held the tone for at least ten minutes, an impressively long duration considering what a strain on his voxcoder it constituted. It was all for naught, however, as Rung seemed entirely immune to the noise. He should get the des’ of the mecha who’d trained the antique to resist interrogation. Growing frustrated with his tolerance, Whirl transmuted his displeasure into glyphs. 

“Come on Doc,” he whined, “you’re bailing on our third date?” 

“ _Bailing_ implies intentional, even deceptive, behavior,” Rung replied, not bothering to look up from where he was shuffling through his datapads. “I neither intended nor expected to be working late this cycle. When it became clear I _would_ be, I came here to tell you in person.” Whirl huffed petulantly, kicked his legs back and forth off the edge of his chair. 

“You do know that’s when we get to go wild on each other’s arrays, right?” he asked, helm tilting and voice turning stern. “Third date is clanging time: that’s the rule.” Now _that_ got a smile out of Rung, even if it was thin.

“I must’ve skimmed that part of the Autobot code,” he said.

“Skimming the code, Eyebrows?” Whirl cycled his optic wide to emphasize his supposed horror at the idea. “I’ll have to report you to Magnus!”

“Report away,” Rung shrugged, jogging his datapads one last time as he rose to his pedes. “He’s the one who asked me to perform a time sensitive assessment at the last minute.”

“ _Time sensitive_?” Whirl clicked his claws, gleeful at the prospect of gossip. “Bet it's one of the mechen Drift and Ratch picked up then, eh? Pharma not the only Delphi-Doc who gets all malpractice-y when their delicate _feelings_ get hurt?” He’d been aiming for a laugh, but Rung’s mouth turned downward in a frown instead.

“You know I can’t tell you the details of my work,” he chided. Whirl huffed loudly, rolled his optic.

“I’m just having some fun. Can you blame me? I got all this free time I’m gonna have to fill now.” Did that sound pathetic? That _definitely_ sounded pathetic. Scrap. But it did get Rung to pause, to turn back to the table with gentle optics. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I know this is sudden. I’ll make it up to you. Come over to my office as soon as I’m done for the cycle.” He reached out, slowly, resting his hand on his rotor shield and pressing a field full of warmth and apology against his plating. “We’ll make plans for next week, alright?” Whirl stared at his hand for a minute; Rung made no move to leave.

“...Next week, right Doc?” he finally asked. Prima, this mecha’s was going to make him _soft_. 

Rung smiled that smile that Whirl swore could make even _Shockwave’s_ spark skip.

“Next week,” he confirmed. “I’ll be all yours.”

***

Next week Rung’s helm was in a million pieces. 

Next week everything had been shattered and Rung was lying on a medical slab and he looked so _small_ , smaller than he’d ever looked before. His helm was gone and his thumb was missing and apparently the medics had needed to rip off his very _kibble_ to treat him, and it was all because of _him_. It was all because, when Fort Max had thrown a tantrum-- Whirl refused to dignify the incident with any word more respectful than‘tantrum’-- and decided to take his vendetta with Prowl out on Rung, Whirl hadn’t been enough. He had been there-- _right there_ \-- and he had _tried_ , he had fought and bargained and distracted. He had spilled his guts-- first literally, with that damn pipe stuck through him, and then then figuratively, when Rung wouldn’t speculate on his tragic backstory for Max’s amusement-- rather than see that damn fusion cannon pointed at Rung’s helm.

But it didn’t matter, it wasn’t enough, he wasn’t _enough_ : strong enough, smart enough, fast enough. Too rash, too crude, too fragging _pathetic_.

In the Medbay one of the Delphi newbies soldered a slapdash patch to keep him from losing any more energon. Once Fort Max had been similarly welded closed and brought to the brig, they suggested he leave. _Suggested_ meaning, on the part of the nurses, ineffectual prodding and shouting; and on the part of Magnus, dragging him out by the pedes like a mangy turbofox. Ratchet hadn’t wanted to let Whirl back into the Medbay after that, going so far as to send First Aid to his suite for his follow up. 

Undeterred by Magnus’ grip, by Ratchet’s weaseling, by Rodimus’ eulogy, he camped out in front of the Medbay Entrance until he was running on fumes and fury, until Ambulon took mercy on him. 

Someone had brought him one of his ships. He was holding it, and what disturbed Whirl the most was seeing his fingers so _still_ around it. He’d never noticed, consciously at least, how much of Rung was movement. Fingers constantly fluttering and tapping and feeling. Hands flapping, frame rocking, legs jostling, antenna twitching. This frame, stripped of kibble and helmless and motionless, was almost unrecognizable.

Foreign as his body was to Whirl, they still couldn’t make his leave him. 

Until the next cycle, that was, when Ultra Magnus came back to personally escort him to the last place he wanted to _be_ for the last thing he wanted to _do_. Once he’d been corralled into the office of the therapist he’d ended up assigned to-- some speedboat named Dr. Skimmer-- xe tried to make him talk about Fort Max. Xe asked why Whirl had been in Rung’s office. Xe asked why he wouldn’t leave the Medbay. Xe asked if Whirl had refueled that cycle. Whirl ignored xir outright, clawing long crooked gashes into the therapy slab in bitter silence as their time ran down. Magnus came around, once the hour was up, to make him go to his suite. 

He tore Animus’ berth half to scrap and punched the walls until his talons crumpled.

***

The week after Whirl destroyed two slabs and officially earned himself a Duly Appointed Stalker, he managed to wheedle Ratchet into letting him visit the Medbay a second time. Rung’s helm had been put together, his thumb replaced. It made him look more like himself, but a repaired frame meant only so much. He was no more responsive, no more mobile, than he had been as an isolated module plugged into a spinal strut. Whirl wanted to grab him by the arms and shake until his struts came loose from their sockets. Whirl wanted to open up his helm to prove to himself his brain was really inside. Whirl wanted his voice, the dim light of his half shuttered optics, the calm of his field. Whirl wanted his smile back.

This time he was a good mecha, only had to be asked twice before he left. 

He wasn’t in the mood for being strongarmed out of the Medbay, for coming up with barbs to spit at Magnus as he dragged him into the hall. He didn’t want Rung to hear. Which was silly-- he knew the activity in his neural circuitry had barely increased since he last saw him-- but he could not shake the feeling that beneath that blank face and those eerily still fingers he was listening. What was it he had said? ‘Remarkably durable, and so _resilient_.’ So what if Whirl had seen livelier corpses? He had a new helm, he had audials again. _Nothing is impossible_. Maybe this was. Maybe _they_ were.

If there was anything for Whirl to be was grateful for, it was the fact that no one seemed to have figured it out yet: Rung and him. Everyone assumed Whirl was in Rung’s office to get his own glitched processor tinkered with. It made sense-- probably more sense than the reality did. They’d only gone out in public once. Everyone knew he was damaged goods. He didn’t see any reason to correct them. No one was giving him pitying glances in the hall, no one was offering sympathy, no one knew how _weak he_ had become. That was good. Better than the alternative, at least. Medbay visits aside, he was careful to maintain a certain distance: throwing himself into fighting and joking and gloating as if he was not burning inside, as if his circuitry felt clear and whole instead of sick and burnt and _broken_. As if violence was still the only thing he could find to cut through the anhedonia. Tearing apart nanocons and provoking Drift and not killing nearly as many Galactic Council Members as he wanted to. He did not mention Rung’s designation, not once, and no one mentioned it to him. 

_Almost_ no one.

Dr. Skimmer tried to ask about Rung. Whirl revved his engine and stared hard at the ceiling and spat out that Dr. Skinner was a dross-soaked scraplet-carcass of a therapist compared to Rung. Rung wouldn’t be so blunt. Well, Rung wouldn’t be so _insensitively_ blunt. Probably. Maybe. Rung would know how to shape his patter around the problem and test his reactions and find the best way to ask. Rung would know how to figure out what Whirl was feeling when hedidn’t even know what he was feeling, when he couldn’t even find words for it, when every emotion tasted like fury or weakness. Dr. Skinner suggested Whirl read up on some of Rung’s writing, if he thought so highly of him work.

Whirl suggested Dr. Skinner bunt a thresher.

***

It had been the three weeks since Whirl’d seen Rung’s helm shattered into pieces when Rewind invited him to tell a story. Whirl told him, in no short words, to go suck start a blaster. Rewind said it was for Rung. So Whirl went. 

It didn’t work. He poured his spark out to the mecha and what did he do? Sat there like a husk in a Relinquishment Clinic stockroom. [[kill him just kill him just like springer he doesn’t want this]] Thank Primus for the alarm, that screeching cry that jarred him out of his memories and out of his pain. Thank Primus for Roddy running up and down the halls, reminding him that he could take that pain and make it physical. He could take that aching and make himself a gun, take that sparkache and make it a bullet. He could take the pain in his spark and pool it into his claws and his guns, he could take his problems and make it someone else’s wound. So Whirl did.

He was jittery all the way down to Temptoria; the shuttle was loud and the smell of burning energon haunted his helm. He arrived like a hurricane, like Solus’ forge, like he hadn’t spilled fuel since the Dead End. He killed every ‘con he could get his claws on, handed weapons of mass destruction out like party favors, and finally concluded that he was just going to have to take the ‘kill’ route for Cyclonus after all.

He hadn’t intended to take the ‘kill’ route for Rewind too. He had forgotten he was still in there. He could have opened the door-- except Rewind’s story had done scrap-all for Rung, except he’d made Whirl look weak in front of everyone, except he and Chromedome were disgusting lovebots, except he wanted Chromedome to lose something like Drift lost Crystal City, except he wanted him to see something he loved die _too_ , except he didn’t want the title of most broken mecha on the Lost Light anymore. He still could have opened the door-- except if he did Cyclonus would be on the other side, Cyclonus and his promises of long and protracted demise.

He carried Rewind back to the shuttle while Tailgate stayed to comm Chromedome. He hovered by the Medbay, and when First Aid called for a spark jump he cleaned up the mess he’d made. He hated the gratefulness in Chromedome’s voice. Chromedome said he owed him a favor. He thought about telling him to shove his needles right through his optic and _twist_ until he stopped twitching. He thought about telling him that the price of his Conjunx’s life was Rung’s. He thought about telling him to suck Rung right out of his brain. He thought about telling him that, congratulations, Rewind’s spark was polluted now.

After he left the Medbay he broke into Rung’s office and stole some datapads off of his shelf.

***

A fourth week passed before anyone thought to tell Whirl that Rewind’s story _did_ work. Or at least, something _Skids_ had done had made it work. Ratchet chased him away from the Medbay without letting him so much as sneak a glance at him. Which was ridiculous, considering he could hear Swerve chattering inside, and he was the one who’d actually _shot him._ Admittedly, Whirl could _sort of_ see how shoving the doors open so hard they’d crumpled and jammed into the doorway while screaming ‘you slag sucking afthelm spawns of Unicron have a _deathwish_ or something?’ might not have been the _most_ delicate approach.

There weren’t any ‘cons around to kill, so he tore down the hall to one of the exercise rooms and dispatched three of the training drones in particularly messy ways.

Dr. Skimmer brought that up at their next appointment. Apparently he’d made enough noise, or at least enough _mess_ , to merit an official demerit from Magnus. Whirl wasn’t pleased with that, but he wasn’t surprised either. Leave it to Mags to write him up for good behavior. Dr. Skimmer asked why tearing three drones into piles of scrap merited ‘good behavior’ in Whirl’s perspective. He spat back that if he hadn’t killed _something he_ would have torn _Swerve_ to scrap, would’ve done so already except that-- in the haze of getting patched up after Max’s tantrum-- he’d heard Ratchet say that Rung’s spark was getting stronger, that his brain module was still active. Rung wouldn’t like it if he offlined Swerve, or Fort Max, or himself. If Rung was going to wake up, he had decided, he wanted to be there. Not in the brig. Someone would have to be there for him to talk to. Someone would have to help him relearn how to move in a damaged body. Someone would have to tell him about Red.

Whirl had wanted to be that someone.

He walked from Dr. Skimmer’s office back to his hab suite and found that his door had finally gotten fixed. He crashed on the mess of sharp edges and warped planes he had made out of Animus’ berth. By the time he’d finished his defragging protocols lights out was in effect. He rolled over in his nest of writhing scrapmetal, took Rung’s datapads out of his subspace. There was something by Froid about personality types, which he tried to puzzle through for about three minutes before tossing aside. One tablet contained several pamphlets about whatever “neurodiversity” was supposed to be, another was a poem with no listed author. Whirl settled on reading an essay about graffiti in the Dead End, because it had pictures. 

He pretended to himself that this was because datapads with pictures were easier to read, not because these pictures in particular were nostalgically, achingly familiar. They were not the most skillfully taken, sometimes blurry and often awkwardly framed, but they were so _real_. They called up cold nights and stale lowgrade-- the aching, unmendable parts of him. A flick back to the introduction revealed that, though the essay was someone else’s writing, the images were all Rung’s work. It was ridiculous and endearing to imagine the little ‘bot rushing around the Dead End, snapping imagecaptures of vandalised signs. 

He grew bored of reading quickly, but uploaded the tablet’s contents to his memory banks anyway, extracting the images and playing them in a slideshow as he idled in his nest. Whirl knew those places, knew that a rover like Rung must have had to climb onto ledges and balance on fences and inch perilously close to traffic to get the angles he did. He felt his optic curve into a smile.

Little guy was tougher than he’d thought.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl receives good news.

On the five week anniversary of the third date he should have had with Rung, Whirl came out of recharge to a message from Ratchet waiting in his inbox. He debated deleting it-- as if moving a message into his trash folder could invalidate the information it contained. Whatever it was, he didn’t expect it to be good. He didn’t want to hear that he was up for another follow up with First Aid. He didn’t want to hear Rung was fading. He didn’t want to hear the little mecha’s first words out of his coma were a request for a restraining order on him.

He opened it, because millions of years of war and his own frenetic processor had cemented for him the fact that the unknown was always, _always_ worse than the known. It took several minutes for Whirl to parse the meaning within the CMOs begrudging and curt glyphs, and even longer for him to be certain he was reading it right.

<< Whirl: You’ve been requested. Visiting hours only. Tell Skimmer: Stop riding my aft. Ratchet.>>

He felt his spark do that ridiculous pathetic _flipping_ thing and didn’t even feel like purging from it. He briefly, magnanimously, considered the possibility of loathing Dr. Skimmer _slightly_ less, but that was a decision to be made in a less heady mood.

When he arrived Rung was propped up on the medical slab, tracing small pictures on a datapad. Whirl recognised the exercise-- the Senate, in its supreme irony, had put him through a half hearted rehabilitation program after they mutilated him-- well enough to tell that Rung was not doing particularly well with it. His optic focused, rapt, on his clumsy servos. Whirl thought about Rung showing him his Ark 1, about the rows of ships he’d seen in his office, about what he’d said about assembling delicate things and the universe at large. Whirl wanted to punch the ever loving scrap out of the universe at large. When Rung finished the assessment, dropping the stylus like an unimaginable burden, Ambulon took the tablet and transferred the date into his file. Rung’s optics continued to point towards his lap, his fingers twitched with none of their usual grace.

“Rung,” Ambulon touched his arm, then pointed to him. “Whirl is here.” Rung’s helm shot up, but instead of focusing immediately on Whirl he turned his gaze back and forth, searching in confusion. “Whirl,” the nurse called as Rung continued to scan the room, “come over so I can show you to Rung.”

“Is there something wrong with your optics?” Whirl asked, cautiously approaching the slab. He watched, plating flared, as Ambulon grabbed Rung’s wrist, prompting the injured mecha to tense.

“Something with his image processing, we think,” Ambulon answered as Rung relaxed into the grip, letting the nurse pull his arm forward. “He can process objects that are stationary or move in predictable set paths, but drones and mechen are still throwing him.” When Ambulon released his wrist and backed away Rung kept his arm out, reaching towards Whirl. “He’s better at recognising people by field and touch, so long as mechen approach him one at a time.”

Whirl hesitated briefly before bowing his helm, pressing the side of his optical bell to Rung’s outstretched hand. Rung furrowed his optical ridges, feeling and tapping clumsily at Whirl’s helm. There was a moment of agony wherein Whirl thought he might not recognise, may never again recognise, a mecha without a face. But then Rung ran his fingers over the surface of his optic, and when he curved it into a smile his own optics flashed bright.

“W- hh- whirl,” he stuttered, face tight with concentration. If Whirl’s spark had flipped inside its chamber before, it was doing a veritable high flying acrobatics act then.

“Hey Rung,” Primus was that his _voice_? “Long time no see.” Rung’s face split into a lopsided grin, the stroke of his servos on his helm turned less inquisitive and more soothing. “I have some of your datapads, if you want something to read.”

Rung hummed in what Whirl was pretty sure was interest, so he rifled through his subspace for some of the loose tablets he had less-than-licitly acquired from his office. He pushed the pads against the servo still resting in Rung’s lap. Rung glanced down, keeping the hand on Whirl’s helm steady, and traced the borders of the tablets with him free servo, field flaring with something murkily similar to embarrassment.

“Can I read one to you?” Whirl blurted, claws clicking nervously. All this time he’d been overclocked to visit the mecha and now he was like a newbuild trying to go in for their first bunt. After a moment of what looked to be deep concentration Rung nodded, tapping one essay in particular. When Whirl took the datapad and moved back Rung’s mouth went thin with panic and he lurched forward, fingers tightening against his audial disk in a clumsy attempt to keep contact.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Whirl said. He didn’t really know what you said to scared mecha to make them less scared, what you said to ease rather than inflict panic. “I’m here.” He pulled the seat next to the slab closer, leaning in so he could read the essay while staying in arm’s reach. “Is that good?” Rung’s optics fixed on Whirl’s, he cracked a wide smile and jerked his helm in a nod.

“Goo- G- Good.”

***

Reading to Rung quickly became a ritual.

It gave Whirl something to do, a task and a target to focus on when he visited the Medbay, and Ratchet thought it would help with Rung’s rehabilitation. Whirl would have prefered conversation. He wanted to ask and answer questions, to share stories, to hear Rung’s soothing voice rambling for hours-- but he knew that would be too much too soon. He had seen enough module damage in his time to know that he and Rung wouldn’t be able to simply pick up where they left off. Rung struggled with speaking, lost the flow of conversation easily, responded to his designation only sporadically. So Whirl read to him instead.

Whirl got his material out of the datapads he’d stolen from his office. He’d swiped quite a few, and Rung recognised them well enough to point out the ones he wanted to hear. He didn’t select many of the drier clinical articles, preferring case studies and opinion essays to stark statistics. He sometimes requested Whirl read a particular passage repeatedly, he wasn’t sure if it was out of confusion or just for the pleasure of it, perhaps a mix of both. He tried to read smoothly and crisply, like the actors in audio-tablets, but his voxcoder often stumbled over the elaborate and precise glyphs. He ended up fudging most of the pronunciation and skipping some words entirely-- Rung, fortunately, didn’t seem to mind. So he came back the next day, and the day after that, bringing his hoard of illicit datapads to every visit.

Rung’s language processing abilities were one of the first skills he recovered. First came an improvement in comprehension, with Rung following requests and responding to questions with increasing competence. Then generation started to progress, with Rung’s vocabulary slowly expanding, his stutter becoming less severe and his nonverbal periods shorter. Ratchet said that this was to be expected-- Rung’s profession required him to be proficient in both listening and speaking. Rung expressed the opinion that his progress was thanks to Whirl’s reading, and deliberate ignored Ratchet’s grumbling to the contrary. As time passed Whirl’s reading periods became shorter, their conversations longer.

Visual processing began to rebound next, albeit at a slower rate. His memory seemed to have been mostly unaffected, along with the majority of his sensory array. It was his motor skills that had gotten the worst of it. His recovery in that domain was slow and laborious, which Rung blamed on his age and on Cybertronian anatomy. The neural circuits that controlled movement had farther to travel, and were dispersed more sparsely, than those for vision or language, he explained. Most of the damage done by Swerve’s stray rivet had been inflicted not to his brain module, but to the circuitry that connected said module to his frame. He noted, as well, that his recovery would be considered remarkably swift, even _miraculous_ , by organic standards.

Ratchet pointed out that Rung _wasn’t_ an organic, then proceeded to assign him twice as many hours of physical therapy per week.

***

When Rung’s gross motor skills had improved enough that Ratchet saw fit to turn him loose, Whirl took him out for fuel to celebrate.

Rung’s servo was unsteady as he lifted his cube. When he pressed the rim to his mouth to drink the fit was awkward, he kept spilling small rivulets of fuel down his chin and the underside of his neck. Whirl made an earnest effort to refrain from find the streaks of glowing pink on the delicate cables of his thin throat erotic, ended up getting him a straw for the both of their sakes. The straw presented a smaller target, of course, but once he’d gotten it between his denta it was much easier to intake through.

The two mechen had arrived at Swerve’s-- between refueling periods, to avoid the worst of the crowds-- and ended up sitting at the same booth they’d shared on their second date. Rung was sticking to med grade, luckily Swerve had a small supply of it under the counter. The bar was still, more or less, the most comfortable place to refuel socially onboard the Lost Light. Whirl had considered asking Rung back to the recreation area by his office, but worried that suggesting such an isolated place would make the little mecha jumpy. He’d also thought about offering his hab suite as a meeting space, but quickly dismissed that possibility based on the mess and the fact that it would probably give Rung the wrong impression.

Dr. Skimmer’s engine would probably stall if xe could see Whirl being so courteous.

“Well,” Whirl said, once Rung had gotten into a steady rhythm of refuel, because they hadn’t spoken more than two words to each other since sitting down and the other wheel had to drop sooner or later. “This is awkward.”

Rung’s optic ridges lifted, he rolled his straw to the corner of his mouth with a flex of his glossa that Whirl’s optic was far too interested in tracking for his own good. “I could mu- make it more awkward,” he said, just a hint of mischief in his field.

“You think so, Eyebrows?” Whirl sang, countering his mischief with his own.

“Y- you never threatened to shoot a mech- ech- echa I love?” he recited, grinning. Whirl’s antenna pinned back against his helm, his optic widened and then narrowed.

“Oh.” _Frag_. “You remember that.” Whirl’s optic immediately flickered down to his claws, he interlaced his talons and scythed them against each other in embarrassment. [[cut him open and take the glyphs out get him before he gets you]] The things his glitched-to-the-pit processor decided to yell in the middle of a fragging hostage situation.

“Whirl-” he began, field colored with concern. [[don’t let him finish]]

“I’d sort of hoped,” he blurted-- louder than he wanted to but it was too late to stop. “I’d sort of hoped that the whole getting-your-helm-exploded business might have taken care of that bit of data before it made its way to long term storage.” He clicked his voxcoder nervously, realising how that had just sounded. “I mean, it’s not like I was rooting for _irreversible module damage_ or anything. But, hey, if you’ve gotta lose _someth-_ ” A small orange servo reached across the table, unflinchingly close to his jittery talons, and rested on his rotor casing. His voxcoder faltered.

“Whirl, it’s alright. It was an abnormal and ex- extremely stressful situation. I harbor no discomfort or misgivings about what you said. I’m… I’m not ready to declare my recipro- pro- procation just yet, but...” He gave Whirl’s plating a comforting squeeze and smiled at him gently. ”I’m here.”

Rung withdrew his hand and resumed refueling. Whirl was quiet for a few minutes before grinding and restarting his voxcoder self consciously.

“So,” Whirl said, finally, into his drink. “Tell me more about that... physical therapy dross.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rehabilitation takes time, takes patience. Whirl and Rung are in it for the long haul.

Rung reached into the box of pegs, fumbling for a while before managing to isolate a target and pinch it tightly between the tips of his fingers. He lifted the peg out, his other hand gripping the edge of the table to steady himself, and moved it over the board. His field hummed with concentration as he attempted to insert it into one of the holes. 

He missed.

Rather badly, too: the base of the peg smacking against the surface of the pegboard nowhere near it’s designated hole. Rung whistle-clicked frustration, lifted the peg and attempted once more to stab it into the board. Another miss. This one, at least, was a little closer. He stuck his glossa between his teeth and bit, faceplates furrowed with concentration. A third try finally found the pesky thing sliding cleanly into it’s proper place. Rung’s mouth curved upwards for a moment, but frustration colored his fields as he glanced back to the peg box, which had at least a dozen more left for him to sort.

“Hey!” Rung jumped at the sudden screech of Whirl’s voice. He ducked his helm by way of apology before continuing. “Lemme show you a little trick.” He pinched the sides of a peg between the tips of his talons, lifted it and rested the base on the surface of the pegboard. “If you do it like this...” He slid the peg forward, letting it drop into the first hole it met. “It’s way easier.”

“Thats n- not the point of the task,” Rung ex-vented, reaching to retrieve another peg. 

“It ain’t against any rules,” Whirl pointed out, trying not to let his antennae twitch as Rung failed his next attempt.

“This isn’t meant to be a g- game, it is an exercise for rehabilitating my fine motor skills. I’m supp- p- po- posed to be doing it the hard way.” Another miss. “You’ll remember that, while the majority of my frame endured only minor damage, my neural circuitry, particularly brain to frame- ame connections-” A third miss, this time he seemed to be getting further away. He raised the peg to optic level. “Cybertronian systems are incredibly resilient, but they don’t fix themselves.” 

He rolled the peg gently between his fingers, the motion stiff and careful, and gazed at it with bright optics. For a few minutes he simply stared, transfixed by the peg, field murky and subdued. Then he exvented, straightening his spinal strut and lining up for another attempt. 

For a while Rung’s office was silent but for the sound of metal tapping and scraping, the clatter of pegs being fished from their box Rung’s small unconscious noises of frustration and victory. Whirl relaxed as he watched, using the program Ambulon had given him for assessing Rung’s progress to record notes about his speed and accuracy. His wasn’t a difficult task, just tedious, and it gave him an excuse to hang around Rung that _wasn’t_ incredibly pathetic.

“You don’t need to do this, Whirl,” Rung murmured, so quietly that he missed his words until he played them back. 

“Come on Eyebrows,” he scoffed, running a parallel process to track the motions of his hands as he turned his primary focus to his face. “I know how annoying this dross is. What kind of mecha would I be if I didn’t share my cheat codes with a fellow invalid, eh?” He curved his optic into what he hoped approximated a reassuring smile. Rung’s grimace indicated he had failed.

“I didn’t mean the advice,” he said, putting the peg on his hand back into the box and clasping his hands together. “I mean... s- staying with me, helping me with the exercises, recording my progress.”

If the little mecha was planning to trick his into revealing his softer reasons for wanting his company, he had another think coming. “You can’t do it yourself.”

“But _others_ could.”

Whirl snorted. “If I don’t, who will?”

“Ratchet,” Rung answered. “First Aid. Ambulon.”

“Yeah, but you don’t like medics.”

“I...” Rung faltered, his optics flashed ever so slightly. Whirl had either said something very right or very wrong. _Great_. “I hold the medics on this ship in great esteem,” he said, finally. “I harbor no ill will toward -ard -ards any of them. I am _myself_ a medic, if you’ll recall.” Whirl might have let that go-- newfound _courtesy_ and all that-- but that wasn’t even a _good_ bluff. He was really going to have to teach him how to lie sometime.

“You don’t like them,” he stated. “Or the medbay.”

Rung ducked his helm. The silence stretched for so long Whirl considered checking if he had fallen into recharge, but as he was raising a claw his helm dated back up. “Did I... tell you that?”

“Nah.” Whirl shook his helm. “I figured it out myself. First I thought it was the module damage, but then I realised it was only happening at certain places and around certain mechen. Every time you come in to get scanned again you’re looking at the entrance, you’re coming up with all these reasons you gotta be standing or sitting instead of lying down on the slab, and you won’t shut up. In a bad way. Not like when you won’t shut up because you’re excited about something, that’s different. And you do _that_ thing.” Rung gave him a questioning look. Whirl gestured to where his hand was currently picking at the paint around his biolights. He dropped his servo back to his lap as if shocked, letting out an embarrassed trill. Whirl couldn’t help but feel a bit smug at having taken him by surprise. “Mechen think I don’t notice stuff, but I do,” he finished, flaring his plating slightly in satisfaction. 

“You are _very_ perceptive,” Rung agreed, which did nothing to deter his ego. For a moment he simply gazed at the other mecha, smiling fondly, before clicking and returning to his task. The conversation lapsed for the next half hour, the scrape of peg to peg and peg to board making up a haphazard soundtrack until the box of was nearly empty and Rung’s voice once more rose above the quiet.

“...Whirl,” he said, voice wavering-- Whirl couldn’t tell if it was from emotion or lingering damage. “The reason that medics-”

“Woah Doc,” Whirl laughed suddenly, raising his claws in supplication. “I’m not gonna make you explain why.” He shrugged, arching his stabilizers to emphasize the motion. “Pits, I don’t like them either. I’d propose a you-tell-me-yours I’ll tell-you-mine type of deal, but uh.” He twisted his claws to catch the light, clacking the tips together. “It’s probably pretty obvious why _I_ hate carvers. I don’t need to know why it gives _you_ the jolts.” 

Rung frowned, optical ridges furrowing, and chewed on his lip before continuing.

“I’m sure that you speak veraciously, but I feel that I have an unfair or at least ill-gotten intimacy with your history. The insight I’ve gleaned into your cognition was the product of coercion, not intentional mutual unveiling.”

“Could you use more jargon, Doc?” Whirl chuckled, drawing his claws back to his body. “I almost understood that.”

Rung cringed “Sorry, I do that-”

“When you’re nervous, yeah,” Whirl cut him off in a clumsy stab at being helpful. Rung seemed to take no offense to it, at least. “Just use actual glyphs.” 

Rung was silent for a while, concentrating, his lips occasionally mouthing the shapes of sounds without vocalising. Finally he straightened his spinal strut and raised his helm. “I know a lot of stuff about you,” he said. “I know the stuff because Fortress Maximus threatened you, not because you decided to tell me. I feel bad.”

Whirl didn’t even need to force a laugh at that. “ _Seriously_ , eyebrows? All that? That was dross. Not even the worst I’ve been through. Definitely not the worst I’ve _done_.” 

“I believe you.” Rung exvented, clasping his servos together and fixing intent optics on Whirl’s. “But I also believe what you shared was very significant. I want to share something significant with you, in exchange. If you are amena- if you want.”

Whirl’s first impulse was to tell Rung there was nothing he could say that would fluster a veteran aftkicker like him. Instead he offlined his voxcoder and seriously considered his offer. Loathe as he was to admit it, he was right. Whirl wouldn’t have brought up any of that scrap, hadn’t _wanted_ to bring up any of that scrap, but for Max. Knowing that Rung _knew_ about him, about the watchmaking and the Dead End and the Senate? That hurt. Knowing that he knew about him and _still_ asked for him in the Medbay, that he hadn’t pried Whirl apart even further, that his gaze had not been poisoned with pity? That... didn’t hurt. Whirl wasn’t completely sure what it did, but he liked it. He liked it, and if Rung had something he thought measured up to that, if Rung had something secret and pitiable about himself, he’d like to do it for Rung in turn.

“Okay, hit me Doc.”

“I…” his voxcoder offlined with a click and he shook his helm, sending a pulse of apology through his field. “Forgive me, it may take me a moment to… to plan out the route of my explanation.” [[tell him to shut the frag up then]]

“I’ve got nowhere to go,” he affirmed, shifting his pedes to plant them more firmly against the floor and trying his best to mimic Rung’s ‘listening pose.’ 

After a few minutes of fidgeting and humming Rung invented, exvented, then reached up and fiddled with something on his shoulder. The kibble on his back, his wheels and plating, sloughed away completely, the mass clattering onto the floor. Whirl jumped to his feet, weapons whirring online and field sharp with horror. His kibble, his plating, a part of his _frame_ just came off like a human shedding their armor.

“Primus-” he sputtered, tearing his optic off of the mass of metal on the floor with some difficulty, focusing instead on Rung’s face. He didn’t look horrified, or agonised, or anything someone _should_ be when one of their most vital extremities just falls off. [[take him apart you could take him to pieces]] “Are- are you-”

“That isn’t my body.” Rung’s voice sounded stiff, his smile was sad and apologetic, as he interrupted him. “That isn’t my kibble. It’s…” He looked down at it, lips tight. “It’s an albatross.”

Whirl wanted to scream that that didn’t explain _anything_ , but he saw the angle of sadness in his posture and bit down on the impulse. He couldn’t smell or see any energon, and Rung’s field was free of pain. Whatever had just happened, strange as it was and violent as it seemed, was not a threat. He forced his guns offline, sat back down despite his protesting actuators and rushing processor. 

“Okay,” he said, processing what the other mech had just explained. “So, you’re like... trans alt?” Whirl hadn’t met- well, Whirl hadn’t _known_ anyone he knew was trans alt, but he didn’t have any ill will towards mechen who were. He was struggling to find something to say that would be supportive instead of demeaning when Rung shook his head decisively.

“No, I transform the same way as w- when I was first forged.” He leaned back, rolling his shoulders a bit and humming between glyphs. “I have an alt which is… unique. It’s purpose is unknown.” [[ask him to transform]] Primus below he was _not_ doing that. That would be… be rude and insensitive and cruel. That hadn’t stopped his processor before, but it _would_ stop his mouth _now_. Whirl rejected the suggestion with extreme prejudice and nodded for Rung to continue. 

“The Functionists Council did not like to see a mecha without a pur- urpose. They attempted to find a use for my alt. They were not kind about it, and that process was... painful. It went on for-- all together-- millions of years. It left lasting sc- scars on my frame and my processor. M- m- many of the perpetrators were medics, and nearly all of the traumatic incidents occurred in medical settings.” He exvented shakingly, field tight to his frame and optics averted from Whirl. Whirl felt his optic narrow as he thought about Rung’s noncombatant frame, him frantic jittering legs swung over the medical slab, his poorly framed pictures of graffiti. _Tougher than he’d thought_. “You were entirely right. Esteem cannot overpower con- conditioned response. Logic is often unable to erase anxiety. Despite knowing that time has long passed, my frame still believes similar mechen and lo- lo- locations are unsafe. My processor insists that, if I am in the medbay, invasive examinations and other forms of medical abuse w- will ensue. It mobilises in an effort to protect me, even if the net result is negative.” 

Whirl thought about offering comfort-- as if he could do that, as if comfort was possible with his claws and his spark. Rung had gone quiet and still, but he couldn’t find glyph, but he had to say _something_ , but- 

“The _Council_ did that dross to you?” He blurted out incredulously, and Rung cringed and you’d _think_ once in a while through sheer _chance_ Whirl would say something _other_ than _the worst possible thing_ but here they were. [[cut out your voxcoder there’s something wrong with it]] “I’m not saying I don’t believe you!” he rushed to add, deliberately sending a pulse of sincerity through his field. “I just-” A functionary had let him leave the corps, had let him have his shop. [[something wrong with it and it’s spreading hurry]] “...I always thought they were a bunch of data compilers,” he muttered, the explanation sounding weak even to his own audials. “Bureaucrats, you know?” He hadn’t known they were capable of...

Rung smiled, optics sad, and nodded.

“The Council was far more powerful and ruthless than they let on. They had enormous sway with the Senate.” He reached for the final peg in the box, holding it over the board and narrowing his optics. “And I don’t believe it is necessary to tell you of the _Senate’s_ sins.” When he brought it down into the final aperture his aim was shaky, but nearly there. A little wiggling got it secured. Whirl stared at the peg, optic dim.

“And now to take them _out_ ,” Rung exvented. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his spinal column. Suddenly his field flashed, sharp and hot with something Whirl could not decipher, and his plating flared. “Pardon m- m- me,” he stood slowly, testing his balance with one hand to the table, before kneeling down and fussing with the fake kibble he had shed. Upon consideration, Whirl was pretty sure the flash coloring his field was something… not good, and he followed his actions carefully with his optic, helm tilted.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Rung raised his helm, blinked behind his scopes. 

“I’m... putting my pack back on?”

“Why? Didn’t you say it was ‘all big dross’?” 

Rung looked confused briefly, then laughed. “An _albatross_ ,” he clarified. “It’s an old term for a burden, a mark of shame... I might have been being a bit _dramatic_.” He smiled, antenna painted downward, all denta and no sincerity. 

“Yeah, sounds like _all big dross_ to me,” he huffed, narrowing his optic at the discarded kibble in disapproval as if it had been the one to cut him open. Rung exvented, but Whirl caught a flash of fondness in his field, briefly overcoming the mystery aura. He stood, gripping the arm of his chair for support, and averted his optics to the floor.

“You don’t need to humor me,” he said, so softly he almost missed it. Whirl wondered if a more conscientious mecha than he would drop the subject. Probably, but he was not _that_ much better, not yet at least.

“What are you on about, Doc?” he asked.

“Me. _This_.” Rung made a sharp stiff gesture to indicate the entirety of his frame. “I told you about my defect willingly and with full awareness of the probable outcome. I know that my alt makes me undesirable on both… cognitive and physiological levels.” He waved his hand, wrist limp. “You mustn’t feel obligated to- not having kibble, it’s like-”

“It’s like not having a _face_?” Whirl interrupted. Rung tensed, opening cer mouth, but only static clicking emerged. “It’s like not having _hands_?” Rung shut his mouth and stared, optics bright, at Whirl. _Don’t have a smart response to_ that _,_ do you _, Doc?,_ he thought with no small measure of smugness. “Listen, Eyebrows, the _altmode_ thing?” he continued, his voice far more confident than his field, before Rung could reset his voxcoder. “That doesn’t change this. Just like the _chronosmithing_ thing didn’t change… _this_. Right?”

“...this?” he asked, voice and field cautiously still.

“You know. _This_.” Whirl waved his claw about to indicate _him_ and _Rung_ and all the slag between them. There was so much slag between them. “The thing where we’re dating and bunting and I’m absolutely fritzed for you.” Prima he was just making himself sound more pathetic with every glyph.

“Our relationship,” Rung clarified, but his field warbled and warped with doubt.

“You want me to prove it? Tell me what I gotta do to prove that I’m still fritzed to a Primusforsaken _Pits_ for you. Paint my aft purple? Pick a fight with Drift? Bring you Megatron’s head on a platter? Find Luna-1 and carve your fragging des’ on it’s surface?” Whirl realised suddenly that he had risen back to his pedes, was looming over the board and casting shadows on the other mecha. He abruptly sat back down, huffed and jittered his claws. 

“We bunted. On the second date. _Before_ ,” he said, quiet and choppy. Whirl nodded in acknowledgement and Rung offlined his optics. “Can we do it again? You don’t have to, I just- If I can feel your field, and if I can touch you, if it’s real...” Well, that’d at least be way easier than stumbling into Luna-1. Whirl leaned forward, over the table, and gently tapped his forehelm to Rung’s crest. It wasn’t passionate-- like it had been so many cycles ago-- but it was steady, the pressure of plating against plating, it was secure. He stayed still and tense for a moment, field still tight, and then all of the sudden began to quiver, plating rattling.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice cluttered with static and artefacts. “I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional. It’s just- it’s been such a long time since-”

“If you don’t wanna, you don’t gotta,” Whirl cut him off, trying to make the electromagnetic aura around his soft and warm, trying to say things with his field that his vocaliser was too crude to convey. For a while Rung was silent.

“I do,” he finally said, voice brittle and glyphs strong. “I want this. I really, really do.”

“Cool. So, how about that third date?”

Rung laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are disappointed that this is not the most satisfying wrap up, please take heart in the fact that I have several more works planned for this series. If you are at all interested in future Rung/Whirl adventures, they will all be posted within the A "Good New Beginning//A Far Off Destination" collection. You can expect more snark and xenoculture as well as, uh, a lot of smut in the fics to come.
> 
>  
> 
> Apologies that this chapter took so long to post, by the way. I'd been updating regularly for the first six chapters because they were all pre-written. From now on I'm going to be posting as I finish, so updates to the series will be more sporadic and take longer.


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